R. Ben-Zion Hai Ouziel wrote extensively on religious, communal and national subjects, as well as Jewish philosophy, his articles appearing in several newspapers and journals. His election as the Sephardic Chief Rabbi (the Rishon le-Zion) carried a concurrent appointment to the Va’ad Le’ummi (National Council of Jews of Palestine) and he participated in the sessions in which the Jewish Agency was founded.

Zivia Lubetkin was born on November 9, 1914 to a well-to-do, traditional Jewish family in the town of Beten in eastern Poland, where in 1880 her father, Ya’akov-Yizhak, who ran a small business, had also been born. Her mother, Hayyah (née Zilberman), was born in 1882 in Useten. During the Holocaust Zivia’s parents went into hiding but were discovered in 1942 and shot on the spot.

As Deborah Berenstein has written: “The nurses of the Second [jwa_encyclopedia_glossary:293]Aliyah[/jwa_encyclopedia_glossary] (1904–1914) integrated among the workers to treat, care for and fill the urgent need of many young people for someone to look after them. … The nurses won “recognition and appreciation for their care of their fellow human beings.” One of these nurses was Sarah Lishansky.

In her contribution to the book Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies, Judith Berlin Lieberman wrote that her goal was to “elevate the teaching of Bible and the traditional commentaries to their rightful place in the curriculum for girls,” to help them “acquire a knowledge of and love for the Hebrew tongue” and of Eretz Yisrael.

A writer, publicist, and Zionist activist, Lotta Levensohn was among the original founders of hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Born in Syracuse, New York on August 13, 1882, and raised in Titusville, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of Moshe Gerson Levensohn, a cantor, and Eva F. (Dvoretzky) Levensohn. Moving to New York, she attended the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Levensohn was one of the leaders of the Harlem chapter of the Daughters of Zion, a women’s study group, which in 1912 decided to launch Hadassah as a national movement. Levensohn was for many years a director of the organization, serving as head of its Central Committee (an office equivalent to the presidency) during 1920 and 1921. At that time, Hadassah had briefly ceased to function as a separate organization, and Levensohn was one of two board members who favored the absorption of the group by the Zionist Organization of America. The seven members who opposed the plan prevailed, however, and Hadassah reemerged as an autonomous entity.

The underground movement Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, known by its acronym, Lehi) came into existence in 1940 in the wake of the opposition on the part of Avraham (“Ya’ir”) Stern (1907–1942) to the cessation of hostilities against the British rule in [jwa_encyclopedia_glossary:309]Erez Israel[/jwa_encyclopedia_glossary] (Palestine) proclaimed by David Raziel (1910–1941), the commander of the Irgun Zeva’i Le’ummi (IZL) during World War II. Stern regarded this decision as mistaken and as the loss of a rare historic opportunity to take advantage of the war situation to obtain concessions from the British, who he felt should be compelled by use of force to fulfill its promise to establish a Jewish state in Erez Israel. “Even in time of war, England is fighting the Jewish [jwa_encyclopedia_glossary:432]Yishuv[/jwa_encyclopedia_glossary], attempting to restrict it, and even manages to provide the military forces to prevent the rescue of Holocaust survivors. In reality, Britain is a foreign power, whose interests in the Middle East do not include a Jewish state … we must not cease our war until Britain is expelled and an independent State of Israel is established.”

Born in Lithuania on June 27, 1885, Rachael (later shortened to Rae) Landy was one of seven children in the family of Rabbi Jacob and Eva (Gross) Landy. The family immigrated to the United States and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1888. Rae had three sisters—Lena, Mae, and Bessie—and three brothers—Reuben, Harry S., and Louis A. Landy’s parents helped to found the Hebrew Orthodox Old Age Home in Cleveland.

At the beginning of the 1920s, Bertha Landsman, who was the only registered nurse in Palestine, established community nursing in Israel. She possessed knowledge, initiative and managerial skills, which she used as a public health nurse and in social work. She worked with Jewish, Christian and Muslim women, persuading them to abandon folk superstition in favor of “correct knowledge and information,” and also taught nursing to local women students, which was no less a challenge.

Hannah Judith (Annie Edith) Landau was born on March 20, 1873, in London, where her father, Marcus Israel (Mordecai, 1837–1913), worked as a clerk for the Jewish community. Annie’s mother, Chaja Kohn (b. Bavaria, Germany 1853–d. 1923), was his second wife. He had five children by his first marriage and during the forty years of his marriage to Chaja a further thirteen were born. Of these, Annie was the eldest. Her parents were of the opinion that girls should receive as fine an education as boys, but there was no sufficiently good school for religious girls in London. Thus, at the recommendation of her mother’s uncle, Moses Weisknopf, she was sent to the Orthodox Samson Raphael Hirsch School in Frankfurt am Main, where her teacher was Mendel Hirsch (1833–1900), the son of Samson Raphael (1808–1888). Returning to London, she studied at Greystoke College, a teacher training institution. After completing her studies there in 1892, she took up a teaching position at the Jews Free School, which she held until 1898.